[tz] Idea for internationalized time point unique time zone abbreviations

Ian Abbott abbotti at mev.co.uk
Thu Jun 7 18:23:35 UTC 2012


On 2012/06/07 05:53 PM, Petr Machata wrote:
> gettext might be kinda sorta used for translating abbreviations as well.
> One would need to mangle the abbreviation, e.g. "Europe/Prague//CET", to
> construct a unique string, which is admittedly quite awkward.  (Also,
> glibc wouldn't know to do it when formatting localized date strings.)
> Then you could shove this to gettext and get back "SEČ" as you expect.
> Scripts could be written to sort the abbreviations into pools of
> equality, so that "Europe/Prague//CET" doesn't have to be translated
> separately from "Europe/Bratislava//CET" etc.

But it would have to get the "Europe/Prague//" bit from somewhere in
order to construct this string.  TZ might not be set or might not be a
tzdata zone name.  The current zone may be set from the /etc/localtime
file or wherever.  There's nothing in the contents of a compiled zone
file to give you the actual tzdata zone name that it originated from.

-- 
-=( Ian Abbott @ MEV Ltd.    E-mail: <abbotti at mev.co.uk>             )=-
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